Brent Hill, chief marketing officer of the upcoming 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic games, has said that people will “have a ball” in Queensland come 2032.
Speaking to News Australia’s (and Brisbane native) Ruby Randall after his fireside chat at Cairns Crocodiles, presented by Pinterest, Hill talked up the city’s burgeoning foodie scene.
During his session in Cairns, Hill told Omnicom Oceania CEO Nick Garrett about the scale and ambition of the Games.
“When that phone call came through to say, ‘We’d like you to join the team’, it was a pretty easy response,” said Hill, who previously served as CEO of Tourism Fiji and has held senior tourism roles in South Australia.
“The scale is massive. When you look at the Winter Olympics… and then you think that the summer Games is 10 to 14 times bigger than that; to work on something really meaningful that can leave a legacy, there’s a real challenge in that, but that’s exciting.”
That scale should also serve as a lightning rod for advertisers and media companies well ahead of the Games’ launch too, according to Hill.
“If you’re a media company, come and talk to us about how you can help put our brand out there,” he said. “If you’re TV and radio, we’ve got moments starting with the emblem launch in the middle of the year… there are moments all the way through.”
He also revealed that the Brisbane 2032 emblem has already been approved and will launch later this year.
“I can’t wait to launch the emblems,” he said. “We’re really proud of them. It’s amazing, you spend weeks geeking out over fonts and colours.”
But beyond logos and campaigns, Hill repeatedly returned to the idea that Brisbane 2032 represents a defining cultural moment for Brisbane itself.
“We will be the smallest city to ever host a summer Olympics,” he said. “But the city will be a stage.”
Hill painted a vision of an interconnected Olympic city where fans can walk between venues, entertainment precincts, restaurants and live sites in a way few previous host cities have managed.
